September 27, 2008

I said I was green-tea blogging -- not drunk-blogging -- the debate last night, and Ricardo asked: "What kind of green tea was it? Enquiring minds need to know. Life is in the details." Okay, then. It was Tazo Zen Tea. If you want to drink the tea I usually drink, however, the #1 choice is Twinings Lapsang Souchong, which has been my favorite tea since I first tasted it more than a quarter century ago.

I favor Kroger, and you can use the box to support slightly oily paper plates that you microwave chicken bits on.

Also in today's excitement, a chicken video, a lonely rooster wants to be near another apparent rooster when one turns up, his two pals having passed on in a neighbor dog accident a month ago. I'm surprised that hawks didn't get them all long ago.

I stopped drinking coffee and switched to tea after the New Year. I love the variety of teas you can drink for various purposes at different times of the day and night. Since I don't drink alcohol anymore, at night a flavorful herbal tea serves the same role that wine or an expensive whiskey or tequila used to serve.

I love unsweetened ice tea, especially Trader Joe's Kettle-brewed white and green tea. But my staple is a strong English Breakfast tea, with a shot of milk. The Zen Awake tea is good, but Twinings and Bigelow are fine, too.

My already high estimation of Ann Althouse just skyrocketed on learning she loves Lapsang Souchang.

And while Twinnings may not be the best version, it is the best version readily available to most in America. You need a really focused tea purveyor to find other brands. Twinnings is quite good enough.

I'm a big coffee and tea drinker. I drink many different kinds of tea, mostly black, darjeeling and oolong. For lapsang souchong, I prefer Mariage frères "Lapsang Souchong Impérial". Mariage Frères is a little pricey, but they ship to the US fast and the tea is of excellent quality, far better than Twinings. Their "Empereur Chen-Nung" is a similar tea with a different, more subtle smoky nuance and absolutely delicious. And the other great thing about them is that their tea bags are muslin cloth rather than filter paper, beautiful to look at and making a great brew.

I also drink a lot of tea from the small Massachusetts based firm Mark T. Wendell, of uniformly excellent quality. I buy the 1 pound cans of several of their teas. Their Earl Grey is very good.

"calrablat said... I'm curious, where do you buy the Lapsang Souchong tea? Every time I go to the grocery store it seems the Twinings tea selection has shrunk a little more."

My link takes you to Amazon, where you can buy it (and support this blog in the process). I have noticed it's getting harder to find. Why they have to have Twinings English Breakfast and Irish Breakfast but not this very distinctive smoky kind of tea... I really don't know.

***Victoria, the picture is an ad... for Cunard, I think.

"Cunard" is an odd word. Looks like an epithet. As in, Bissage is being a bit of a cunard here.

Colin Haye Band has a song called "Beautiful World" (from the t.v. show Scrubs soundtrack) where he sings: "My my my it's a beautiful world/ I like drinking Irish tea/ With a little bit of lapsang souchong/ I like making my own tea."